Well, all eyes are on New Jersey's embattled senior U.S. senator, Bob Menendez, who's facing a monday filing deadline to decide if he wants to run for reelection in the U.S. Senate primary.

Our very own D.C. correspondent, Ben Hulac, chased him down in the halls of the Capitol and is with me now for more.

Ben, so good to finally have you on set.

Welcome unofficially and officially to the team.

You caught up with Menendez, which is not necessarily an easy thing to do.

And what did he tell you?

You're right.

He's been a bit elusive these days.

Logically, in the Capitol.

He he didn't say much.

I caught him in the Senate subway and he said that he will let us know this week.

So it's Thursday.

I took that to mean by the end of business Friday, tomorrow.

Other than that, he really wasn't keen on talking about much.

Yeah, I mean, he's been saying that he's focused on the trial, which is slated to begin in May, focused on getting his defense up and proving that he's innocent in these corruption charges.

But he is running out of time.

And I wonder if there is a path for him if he decides suddenly to stay in it.

Conceivably.

But it's hard.

Tammy Murphy and Andy Kim are, of course, duking it out for the Democratic nod that that election date is in June.

Theoretically, he could run as an independent.

There are about 2000 U.S. senators in history since the start of the country, 1789.

This tally goes back.

And only 77 have been independents or from a lesser a third party.

So he's really running out of options and the paths are closing.

Yeah, And I don't know what the statistics are in New Jersey, but independents typically don't fare well here.

Regardless of the election.

I'm curious, though, about the race itself.

You did a little digging into the financial disclosure forms for the candidates.

First Lady Tammy Murphy, Congressman Andy Kim, Patricia Campos medina, others who are running on the Democratic side.

What did you find?

I didn't look at Campos Medina, but I looked at I looked at the heavy hitters, the ones who will likely win the nomination.

Murphy has a lengthy, lengthy filing.

I've looked at dozens, maybe hundreds of filings in my reporting career.

Hers is 69 pages, and it is a whole trove of information.

A lot of assets are listed in her children under her children.

How does that stack up compared to other just, say, wealthy members of Congress whose report she's looked at?

It's a safe bet that she would be toward if she were elected, she would be toward the top of that list and certainly among the wealthier members of Congress.

Mitt Romney is quite a wealthy guy.

He has a lengthy disclosure, as does Mark Warner, made a made a mint in the tech industry.

He's a Virginia senator, but she is certainly towards the top of the list by comparison.

Senator Menendez, I think his disclosure was maybe seven pages.

Booker.

I want to say Corey Booker That is six pages.

And Dickens was in the same ballpark.

So hers is in a different galaxy.

What does that tell us about a candidate when we look at a report like that?

Frustratingly, at least to me, it doesn't tell you a whole lot.

It gives you broad numbers and the general ballpark of what someone's worth.

And I should also note candidates and members have to file them.

And then once you're elected, whether to the Senate or the House, you have to file disclosures pretty steadily.

So if you make a stock trade, if you buy a bond or sell a bonds, you have to publish that to the House clerk.

If you're a House member or two Senate authorities, the problem and this gets back to what these records really show you, is that there's often a big delay.

So maybe months go by after after a trade is publicized and has happened and the latest disclosures out are actually from the calendar year 2022.

So a lot has happened in two years.

And I should add, on top of all of this, they state ranges not only of assets but of the income from those assets.

So what does that mean?

So Murphy, for example, the biggest item on her list I could find was a blind trust in her name.

And I should point out the governor, her husband has another blind trust under his name, but hers was worth a minimum of $5 million and a maximum of $25 million.

So thinking about a small chunk of change there, that's a wide range.

No.

And 5 million is is a heck of a lot of money to any any average person.

25 is a different realm.

And the money she said in this statement, in this in this report that she gets from that blind trust annually is again this gaping range 100 K to 1 million.

So there's a lot of guesswork.

It's it's nice that these exist.

It's certainly better than operating in the dark from a reporter's perspective, but it's hazy.

Interesting, too, because we know Tammy Murphy already has a powerful perch, but money also gives access to power, of which there's plenty.

Ben Hulac.

Good to have you on the studio.

Thank you so much.